Fiduciary Investment Advisors

The firm that is now Fiduciary Investment Advisors began with Mark Wetzel in 1991 at Kidder, Peabody & Co. Michael Goss was the second adviser to join Wetzel’s team. Kidder, Peabody & Co. was bought by Paine Webber in 1994, merging with UBS AG in 2000.

The group, which remained through those changes, became part of the PRIME Asset Consulting Group at UBS, offering a fee-for-service consulting model and pressing for fiduciary status. However, some clients were skeptical of the group’s brokerage affiliation. “We would go out, and clients and prospects were very excited—but there was always someone questioning us,” Goss says. Consequently, in 2006, 14 of the 15 people on the team at UBS left to found Fiduciary Investment Advisors. The firm has grown to 23 members, including seven advisers (six of the consultants are principals of the firm as well; the seventh principal is Chief Operating Officer Maureen Cooper). Something that separates FIA from its competitors, Goss says, is the firm’s broad retirement plan expertise. Beyond an average industry experience level of 17 years, among the consultants are six MBAs, three CFAs, three PRPs, two AIFs, and the analysts have two CFAs and a CPA among them.

FIA frequently is entrusted with more than one retirement plan at a company, and has expertise in corporate defined benefit and defined contribution plans, as well as government, nonqualified deferred compensation, and, more recently, 403(b) programs. Wetzel notes that multiple law firms have hired FIA to advise and serve as a fiduciary. “It speaks to our process and procedure when ERISA attorneys are putting their stamp of approval on us and referring clients to us,” he says. The firm’s service model matches two consultants, an analyst, and a client service contact with each client.

FIA serves plans as small as $5 million and as large as $1.2 billion and, while they don’t “have a specific target,” Goss says they generally fall in the $25 million to $250 million range.

The firm has made an effort to have its consultants sit on investment committees; Wetzel is a member of five investment committees, including Novartis Corporation, while Goss chairs the investment committee at the Watkinson School, and also sits on the investment committee of The Horace Bushnell Memorial Hall Corporation. By actually spending time in the clients’ shoes, Wetzel says, it helps FIA’s advisers serve their clients better.

Photo by Julie Bidwell